Looking for Comet Holmes

Here is how to find the exploding Comet Holmes, “the strangest comet to burst into the celestial scene in our lifetime” and which is supposed to be easy to see with your bare eyes  in the night sky according to Sky & Telescope magazine:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10862521.html

 More about Comet Holmes on spaceweather:

http://www.spaceweather.com/

I could not find it last night!

What would it look like to live One Year following the Bible Exactly?

A.J Jacobs is signing his book, The Year of Living Biblically,  at The Chester County Book and Music Company in West Chester, PA. This is the guy who is on the cover of the Nov 2007 issue of Relevant Magazine! Getting your picture on the cover of Relevant is like getting your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stones in the 1970s or being Time’s Man of the Year in the 1950s! Relevant Magazine is a Christian Magazine that covers God, Life, and Progressive Culture.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007
7:30 PM

A.J. JACOBS

Our good friend A.J. JACOBS visits to sign and discuss his funny and profound new book, THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: ONE MAN’S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY AS POSSIBLE, at 7:30 PM. This wonderfully entertaining tome documents the author’s quest to live one year in literal compliance with biblical rules, from being fruitful and multiplying to growing a beard and avoiding mixed-fiber clothing. Don’t miss this signing!

link

Is the Airbus A380 safe?

The first commercial flight of the Airbus A380 happened with much fanfare:

What Was it like to fly on the A380? BBC News Oct 25

A380 superjumbo lands in Sydney, BBC News Oct 25, 2007

But I question the safety of this Superjumbo jet because of my whistle blowing friend Joe Mangan. He was in charge of a group of engineers who designed and built this plane. It way over-ran its budget and its schedule. The superjumbo ended up costing over $17 billion dollars.

Joe pointed out that the off-the-shelf TiTech microchips that control the air cabin pressure had not been thoroughly tested (which Mangan estimated would take two years)  with the outflow valves for the cabin pressurization system.  This system had been  specially designed and redesigned for this airplane.  He would not sign off on it. TTTech fired him, filed civil and criminal defamation suits, and secured a gag order which Mangan did not abide by because he thought the people could die on the plane if the problem wasn’t fixed. He ended up bankrupt and probably in jail in Vienna.  I see nothing on the web to inform me that these tests were ever done.

Read all about it here.

So how did the A380 get certified? Here is what I could find out in briefly searching the web. This is from the Air Accident Current Newsletter:

Comments: This is at least the tenth special condition issued by the FAA for the A380. Previous special conditions were issued in 2005 covering a variety of A380 safety issues, including emergency evacuation, structural durability during a crash landing, loads imparted by seized engine components, gust loads, and ground turning loads on taxiways. The prevalence of special conditions is an indicator of the degree to which formal certification standards have not kept pace with the march of technology.

The electrical equipment bays in the A380 are along both cabins and over the cockpit. Recall the fire over the forward cabin and cockpit on the Swissair MD-11 that crashed in Halifax in 1998 was not discovered by the crew until the fire burned through the ceiling in the cockpit.

These various electrical equipment bays in the A380 may warrant the installation of closed-circuit television to enable the flight crew to discriminate between real fires and false alarms. Such a closed-circuit infrared camera system was installed in Swissair’s surviving MD-11s following the Halifax accident.

The special conditions do not address the need for fire suppression, such as built-in extinguishing systems, or a means to provide the crew with access to the electrical equipment bays to apply hand-held fire extinguishers (which may require a port for the extinguisher, as opening the bay may enable the inrush of cabin air, which could fan the flame).

Note that the FAA issued a type certification for the A380 on December 14, 2006. Thus, it approved the design of the airplane at the same time it was still issuing special conditions regarding its design.

http://www.airaccidentdigest.com/0207_story3.html (emphasis added)

Here is Joe blowing the whistle.

Here is my other post on Joe.

NASA Satellite Picture of California Fire Storm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/7059758.stm

It looks like the wind is blowing  hard to the west – toward San Diego and Los Angeles. Those clouds are plumes of  smoke that are being created by the fire and it is all pointed west into the Pacific Ocean. There are certainly a lot of red dots – particularly east of San Diego.

Here are the numbers – 12 large uncontained fires have burnt 335,000 acres.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/socal_wildfires_oct07.html

http://www.cbs8.com/misc/fires_oct_07/maps.html

http://www.cbs8.com/misc/fires_oct_07/homes_destroyed.html

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=114250687465160386813.00043d08ac31fe3357571&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=8

Woody Allen Interviews Billy Graham

part 1: 

part 2: 

Palestinian Christian Martyred

Rhami Khadar Ayyad, 32, the director of The Teacher’s Bookshop, the only Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip, was publicly tortured and killed. Here is the AP article that says that Hamas has condemned the killing.

“This grave crime will not pass without punishment,” the ministry said in a statement.

Please pray for the 3200 Christians who live in Gaza and that the relations with the Gaza Muslims will stay “generally good” and that even more Palestinians would come to a knowledge of the truth of the Prince of Peace.

Here is another article about how Gaza Christians are Nervous after Killing of Bible Bookstore Operator.

Jim Wallis is speaking at Villanova, PA

On Friday, October 26 2007 at 7:30 at the Villanova Theology Institute’s God and Mammon Conference. This conference is free, but registration is required,  and open to the public. You can register hereHere is the line up for this Friday Afternoon and Evening:

Plenary: Bruce Malina – Every Rich Person is a thief or heir to a thief: New Testament and Early Christian Perspectives on Wealth and Poverty

Keynote: Shane Claiborne – Simplicity, Discipline and Community: Strategy for Resisting the Lure of Mammon

Keynote: Jim Wallis – The Many Guises of Greed

link

Jim Wallis is the founder and CEO of Sojourners and the author of God’s Politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it.

Shane Clairborne is the founding member of the Simple Way  in Philadelphia and author of The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Bruce Malina – is a scholar of NT times from Nebraska that I haven’t heard of before.

If anyone would like a ride from West Chester – please contact me or leave a comment.

Temple Football wins again – three times in a row

The last time Temple has won three games in a row was 1990.

The last time Temple won three conference games in a rows was 1967.

They are now 3-5 after beating Miami (OH) 24-17

Temple is the school that Josh, who is totally uninterested in football, went to last year. It is located in Philadelphia, and is not known for having a strong football program, even though Bill Cosby did play for them years ago.

The Undefeated Kansas Jayhawks (7-0)

The Kansas Jayhawks football team  is undefeated after seven games:

 

Opponent	Location	Date/Time (CT)	TV	Result	Standings
CENTRAL MICHIGAN	Lawrence, KS	9-1-2007/6:00 pm	(none)	W 52-7	1-0
SOUTHEASTERN LOUISIANA	Lawrence, KS	9-8-2007/6:00 pm	(none)	W 62-0	2-0
TOLEDO	Lawrence, KS	9-15-2007/6:00 pm	(none)	W 45-13	3-0
FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL	Lawrence, KS	9-22-2007/6:00 pm	(none)	W 55-3	4-0
@ Kansas State	Manhattan, KS	10-6-2007/11:00 am	FSN Midwest	W 30-24	5-0 (1-0 Big 12 North)
BAYLOR	Lawrence, KS	10-13-2007/11:30 am	FCS Central	W 58-10	6-0 (2-0)
@ Colorado	Boulder, CO	10-20-2007/4:30 pm	ESPN	W 19-14	7-0 (3-0)
@ Texas A&M	College Station, TX	10-27-2007/6:00 pm	ESPN2
NEBRASKA	Lawrence, KS	11-3-2007/TBA	TBA
@ Oklahoma State	Stillwater, OK	11-10-2007/TBA	TBA
IOWA STATE	Lawrence, KS	11-17-2007/TBA	TBA
vs. Missouri	Kansas City, MO	11-24-2007/TBA	TBA

That is pretty spectacular so far!

So I got together with Kansas Alumni  in Paoli PA – at a place that has awesome crab cakes and was featured in the October issue of Oprah’s Magazine (according to the menu).  We are splitting the group next week to watch the Kansas-Texas A & M game. There will be a group of Jayhawks meeting in Center City Philadelphia and another at the same place in Paoli.

Go Jayhawks!

Doug Lamborn rises to protect Rush Limbaugh’s Reputation

UPDATE: The “Liberal’s Fraudulent Attack” letter on Rush Limbaugh just sold for 2.1 million dollars to bettyc588 who is an AAAA+++ ebayer! The money is going for a charity that provides scholarships to children of dead soldiers. Here is Rush’s interpretation of the events – link. Limbaugh says that when he used the phrase “phony soldiers” he meant people who had flunked out of boot camp, and then lied about being in Iraq. He wasn’t referring to soldiers with peaceful opinions like the letter suggests.

Doug Lamborn, Colorado Rep, and old friend of mine, made the following speech in congress:

LAMBORN:  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to denounce the liberals’ fraudulent attacks on Rush Limbaugh.  Anyone who reads the widely available transcript, as I have done, sees that Mr. Limbaugh was appropriately referring to the pretenders who pose as medal winners, or who falsely claim to have committed atrocities in Iraq, when he used the phrase “phony soldiers.”  No, the real scandal here is that liberals in America and here in this Congress are willing to manipulate facts to smear those they disagree with.  But there’s an even more insidious agenda by liberals going on, and that is to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which is actually a way to silence conservatives on the radio waves.  Mr. Limbaugh deserves mega kudos for being a forceful and effective voice on the side of common sense and for being an example of the First Amendment in action.  After all, isn’t that what our country is supposed to be about?

…and the funny letter that speaker of the house  Harry Reid wrote to Rush – and which Rush promptly put on auction at EBAY, which I have been watching today, has gone up to over $850,000!!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Original-Harry-Reid-Rush-Limbaugh-Smear-Letter_W0QQitemZ260170172469QQihZ016QQcategoryZ4105QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

So it is time to cry Crocodile Tears for Rush.  😦

 … however Rush was wrong about McNabb and he was wrong about Lawrence KS.  and he is wrong here. Read this article in yesterday’s Washington Post to get back into reality:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101500841.html